“TO HAVE SEX,” I almost yelled.
Only I didn’t want to wake his parents up. Let alone the Secret Service.
So I whispered it.
Loudly.
But even though I whispered it, instead of shouting it, David still looked totally shocked. His face, in the warm light from the reading lamp beside his bed, started to turn as red as my hair used to be.
“Sex?” he echoed hoarsely.
“You know what I’m talking about,” I said. I couldn’t believe this. What was wrong with him? “You’re the one who brought it up.”
“I did?” His voice kind of broke on the word did. “When?”
“Outside my house,” I said impatiently. What was wrong with him?
Maybe he really had slipped and hit his head in the shower. “Remember? You invited me to Camp David to play Parcheesi.”
“Yeah,” David said, now looking blank. But also still hot. “Which we did already.”
Which we did already. Oh my God. I couldn’t believe he’d said that.
Also, that he’d still looked so hot saying it.
“But I didn’t mean…” David stammered. “I mean, when I said Parcheesi, I meant—”
Something cold gripped my heart. Seriously. It was like someone had dumped a whole glass of ice water over my head, and a bunch of cubes had slid down my shirt.
Because it was obvious by the expression on David’s face—not to mention, the way he was acting—that when he’d said Parcheesi, he’d really meant…Parcheesi.
“But,” I said, in a small voice, “you…you said you thought we were ready.”
“Ready to spend the weekend together with my parents,” David said, his own voice uncharacteristically squeaky. “That’s all I meant by ready.” Then, his eyes widening, he went, “Is THAT what you were talking about the other night? When you said you’ve said yes to sex?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “What did you think I meant?”
David kind of shrugged. “I just thought you were trying to make a point to my dad. That’s all. I didn’t know you were REALLY…you know. Saying yes to sex.”
Especially since he hadn’t even asked me.
“Oh,” I said.
And wanted to die.
Because it had all been for nothing. All of it, the worrying, the long talks with Lucy, the Just Say Yes to Sex thing, slut solidarity—all of it, for nothing.
Because David had never meant for us to have sex this weekend. I was the one who’d jumped to the conclusion that Parcheesi meant sex. I was the one who’d assumed when David had said he thought we were ready, he’d meant he thought we were ready for sex. I was the one who’d said yes to sex, when it turned out no one had even asked me.
It had all been me. I had brought all that worry and angst upon myself.
For nothing.
God. How totally embarrassing.
“Um,” I said. Now I was the one turning red. I mean, what could he be thinking about me? Here I’d come, barging into his room, demanding to know why we weren’t having sex already. He must think I’m a total raving lunatic. “Yeah. Listen. Um. I’ll just, um, be going.”
Except with each step back toward the door, I couldn’t help noticing stuff. Like how good David looked in the glow of the lamplight.
And how green his eyes were, the exact color of the lawn at the Kentucky Derby.
And how he still looked so confused, in an adorable, geeky-boy kind of way, with his hair kind of sticking up in back, where it had gotten mushed against the headboard as he was reading.
And how wide and comfy-looking his chest was, and how good it would feel to rest my head there, and listen to his heartbeat….
And suddenly, I heard myself say, “Um, could you just wait here a second?”
Like he was going somewhere.
Then I turned around and ran as fast as I could back to my room.
When I came back, I was even more out of breath.
I was also holding a brown paper bag.
David glanced at it, then up at me.
“Sam,” he said, in a suspicious—but not necessarily displeased—voice. “What’s in the bag?”
So I showed him.
15
When I let myself into the house the next day, I was shocked to see my father sitting in the living room, listening to Rebecca play “New York, New York” on her clarinet.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted out, as Manet, who’d run to the door at the sound of my key in the lock, jumped all over me.
Rebecca lowered her instrument and said, “Excuse me. I’m still playing.”
“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “Sorry.”
My dad, who wasn’t reading the paper, talking on the phone, or doing anything, actually, except apparently listening to his youngest daughter’s performance, smiled at me a little painfully as I stood there waiting for the song to end. When it did, he clapped, almost as if he’d really enjoyed it.
“That was great,” he said enthusiastically.
“Thank you.” Rebecca primly turned a page of the book sitting on her music stand. “And now, continuing my tribute to the nation’s greatest cities, I will play the song ‘Gary, Indiana’ from The Music Man.”
“Uh, could you wait until I’ve gotten a refill?” my dad asked, holding up his empty coffee mug. Then he hurried out into the kitchen.
I looked at Rebecca.
“What,” I asked her, “is going on here?”
“Those Big Changes Dad was talking about the night you said yes to sex on TV,” she said with a shrug. “They’ve decided to spend more time with us. So I’m going to play him every single song in my repertoire, to see how long until he cracks. He’s held up surprisingly well, so far. I give him two more songs.”
Stunned, I carried my overnight bag into the kitchen, lured there by the smell of something baking. I was shocked to see my mom, and not Theresa, bent over the open oven door, going, “Do these look done to you, honey?” to my dad, who was refilling his coffee mug.
She was baking chocolate chip cookies. My mother, the meanest environmental lawyer in town, was baking chocolate chip cookies. Her PDA was nowhere in sight.
My overnight bag fell from my hands and landed with a thump on the floor.
My mom looked over her shoulder at me and smiled.
“Oh, Sam,” she said. “What are you doing home? I thought you were gone for the weekend.”
“We had to come back early,” I said. “David’s dad wanted to get together with his advisors to revise some things on his Return to Family initiative before unveiling it to Congress on Monday. What are you doing?”
“Baking cookies, honey,” she said, and pulled the tray from the oven, then closed the door. “Watch out, they’re hot!” This she said to my dad as he tried to reach for one.
“Why aren’t you guys still at Grandma’s?” I asked.
“That woman is dead to me,” my dad said, taking a cookie anyway, and burning his fingers.
“Richard,” my mother said, narrowing her eyes at him. To me, she said, “Your father and his mother had a little disagreement, so we came home early.”
“Little?” my dad said, after gulping some coffee to wash down the hot cookie he’d stuffed in his mouth, to keep it from burning his fingers, and burning his tongue instead. “There was nothing little about it.”
“Richard,” Mom said. “Richard, I told you, those cookies are hot.”
My dad took two more anyway, holding them on a paper towel. “See ya,” he said, heading back toward the living room, Manet following eagerly behind him, in hopes of scoring some dropped cookie. “‘Gary, Indiana’ awaits.”
“Okay, seriously.” I stared at my mom. “What is going on here? I leave for one night, and you guys suddenly turn into the Cleavers? Where’s Theresa?”
“I gave her the weekend off,” my mom said, attempting to scrape the cookies she’d just baked off the metal tray they were sitting on. Unfortunately, they weren’t coming off all that easily. “It’s important for her to spend time with her own family, you know. Just like it’s important for all of us to spend time together, too. Your father and I discussed it, and we agree with the president. Not with everything he said, of course.” She worked at scraping up a particularly recalcitrant (SAT word meaning “stubborn or rebellious”) cookie.